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Global logistics

Global logistics company delivers quality at speed with test automation

Company overview

“Delivering a reliable service and quality is a priority.” That was the mandate this global logistics company set for its development team. Organizational leaders knew defects in production could have deep repercussions for business-critical applications handling transport logistics, capacity planning, and cargo handling.

Comprehensive testing required covering 34 different statuses in the system, execution of over 1,600 test messages to the system, and repetition of half of those, both on SIT and UAT system environments. With regular releases of all applications relying on a small testing team of three manual testers, completing a single test cycle took a minimum of one week. This meant tests typically could only be run once per release.

Various forms of script-based automation had been brought in over the years – all of which failed. This was due to lack of scripting knowledge, script maintenance challenges, and insufficient resources to establish automation.

When a new testing manager was brought into the organization, he knew they could not scale testing and continue to maintain quality without test automation. He knew the answer involved finding a test automation solution that would reduce the amount of effort associated with test automation – but not require any scripting by the testing team.

Challenges

  • Critical business applications needed to be released more frequently
  • Testing required a minimum of one week to complete a single test cycle
  • Multiple environments needed to be tested
  • Extensive post-test analysis needed to be completed (in addition to the actual test execution)
  • Quality was critical to ensure accurate, cost-effective delivery
  • Scripted-based automation efforts had failed multiple times in the past and reduced confidence in test automation
  • Delivery of a service should be right the first time

Solution

After an extensive market survey, this company decided that Tricentis Tosca was the ideal test automation tool for their needs, based off its premise of model-based testing. Tosca allowed their initial three-person testing team to expand the scope of testing they performed on critical systems, quickly and easily, without having to learn a scripting language.

The team used a two-pronged approach to determining what and where to automate – both vertical and horizontal. Their vertical approach focused on the most business critical applications with frequent release cycles to expedite the processes of testing. A horizontal approach was also instituted to begin the process to getting basic testing on all internal applications and establishing the base for end-to-end testing.

Today, regression testing is in place for every critical business application and covers 100% of all movement statuses for both SIT and UAT.

Business testing that once required a week to complete is now done in 15 minutes and is executed twice daily, or on demand. Test execution is kicked off from Atlassian Bamboo with results auto-generated and communicated to stakeholders by email – which requires zero human interaction. This process allows for a greater level of test analysis to increase the efficiency of their test automation.

This small team was able to translate the value of test automation to both speed and quality for the organization. Their success has propelled the demand for automation across multiple applications and created a business case to expand their team from three to 10 automation engineers to meet expectations faster.

“The return is better quality, and you measure it when you go into production. Finding those defects earlier in the development process was a quick win for us.”

Results

  • Reduction of test execution cycles from one-week manual testing to 15-minute automated execution
  • Tests triggered fully automatically by Bamboo
  • More reliable test results with automated test suite execution twice daily or on demand
  • Standardization of test runs ensures consistency and accuracy
  • Auto-generated reports instantly shared with development stakeholders via email
  • Additional time for post-execution test analysis to continuously optimize testing strategy
  • 35% growth in testing team to due to more departments wanting to experience the proven value of test automation

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